Free time has come to zero (more or less)

Good afternoon followers!

Some minutes ago I received the critical phone call telling me when I’ll start my job… 2 May. Exactly in three days from now! So, as the title of this post says, my free time has roughly come to zero. Or better, if I’m not wrong, my only free days should be Saturday and Sunday (and this is right, because my job will be full-time). Other days I will be busy from 6:30 to 20:30 because I have to spend around 5 hours in public trasportations, and honestly I’m not very sure on how much I will be able to work on my projects by night after 20:30, since I should at least eat, have a shower (duh!) and go to bed not later than than 00:00 (or I will never wake up at 6:30).
Honestly I expected to begin the job more or less in the middle of May, since my boss told me so some days ago, but looks like something changed in their plans. At least, the earlier I begin, the earlier I get paid!

I’m not going to talk about how I feel now and similar things, so I’m going to post an update of Duel Of Speed wich I did some time ago, but wich I totally forgot to post here! Here’s a quick screen:

Since the first (and only) time I posted Duel Of Speed here on the Diary, I did many important changes to game mechanics:

• Larger track and smaller spaceship;
• Opponents have a “perfect” AI, wich you almost can’t beat (this is only for testing purposes: AI will have different difficulty levels later in the development, and different behaviours too);
• Opponents start racing as you press UP, then they will race indipendently from you (no semaphore lights yet, pardon);
• Taking sharp turns makes you gain ground, while taking wide turns makes you lose ground, just like in real car racing. Opponents always make really sharp turns, so it’s very very difficult to overtake them;
• Changed the way in wich track inclination is handled, making it completely indipendent from turns and slopes (this makes it easier to build tracks for me, and avoids wrong orientation of the background);
• Background movement is now completely smooth;
• Racetrack fades away in the background instead of ending roughly at the horizon;
• Some small changes to controls, speed scale, track design (it’s still the same test track), and bug fixes;

You can obviously try the latest version at this link. Remember there’s no ending, so you can race as long as you want.

I’m pretty sure I can continue to work on my projects only on Saturday and Sunday, but one thing is sure: I will never abandon my games. Sooner or later I will bring them to conclusion, and start making new ones, because this is what keeps me alive. :)

Thanks for reading today’s post! I’m pretty sure I’ll post something after some days of work… I’ll let you know my opinions on my new job at EgoRego. See you around on the web!

Danjel Ricci

 

Update on…

Hello again followers!

If you were expecting updates on Beach Marbles Racing… Well… Ehm… I’m really sorry, but I haven’t any. :(

The fact is that last days were full of things to do, and most times these were things to do for others. As a result, I had very few time to spare for myself… It’s a consequence of being too kind with other people: I always end up to waste time for things that are absolutely useless for me; but I consider myself too kind with my friends, and so, shit happens. My time becomes their time.

Apart from this, I have something very important to say: I have been hired at EgoRego in Rome for a full time job, in the position of iOS App Developer with Unity3D and Xcode: if you think better about it, I’ll do at work the same things I actually do at home (more or less). :D
I literally couldn’t ask for something better: I’m going to be the lead programmer, contract is legal (so no undeclared work), salary is excellent (higher than my father’s one, hell yeah), people working there are young, smart and cool, I will have my own iMac to work on… And everything without the need of graduation! Take this, high school! Obviously I need to learn some things during the first times I’ll work there, so I already bought the right manuals.
The big downside is that I’ll waste 5 hours on public transportations, because the office is really far from my home. So, wake up at 6:30, leave at 7:30, start work at 10:00, finish work at 18:00 and come back home at 20:30. This means no more time to dedicate to my projects, if not from 21:30 to 24:00… :(

It kinda makes me sad now.
I want to work on many personal things, but I need to have a stable job.
I want to try extreme ways, but I can’t be indipendent without an economical earning.
I want to dedicate my time to my projects, but I need to have something more concrete in my hands.

And so I feel happy and sad at the same time, because now I have a real work where I do things I like, but I won’t have time to do things I like the most…

I will sign the six-months project contract these days, but I’ll start to work in two weeks. In these six months I will learn more things about programming, and I will work on a complex App. After this time, EgoRego may offer me a permanent contract if I liked the experience and If I worked enough well for them. Actually I don’t know what to say about it: time will speak!

And that’s all for today. Thank you for reading this post, wich may have bored you (in that case, sorry)! I’ll try to keep everything updated as things go on, soo see you around!

Danjel Ricci

 

Back from Codemotion 2012!

Welcome back dear followers! Or better, welcome back to me…

First thing first: sorry! More than a month passed since my last update, and this Dev Diary sleeped for all this time… But since the previous post, I found more than 250 visits! So, thanks a lot for your interest, you don’t know how much it’s important to me. :)

So, what happened this month? I’m still working on that Pizzeria website, because the customer is SO DAMN SLOW at letting me know about what he wants in the site. It’s still almost empty… I also had been ill for two consecutive weeks, but tried to create a small 2.5D racer tech demo. But let’s walk step by step.

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- Codemotion 2012Held in Rome this 23th and 24th of May, Codemotion is the annual event dedicated to all development technologies and languages. And since there was a small area dedicated to gaming (shown the in photo), we indie developers had a good occasion to show off our games and let people try them freely. I was there too, showing off Beach Marbles Racing and two tech demos (discussed later in this post). In the photo, I’m the smiling guy with curly hair and dressed in white, behind that Macbook! Four more pics here (thanks to Andrea and Riccardo for taking the shots)!

Surprisingly, my game received a great feedback by people there. And I had nothing more than my Mac, my iPod and my biz cards! I’m not lying if I say all the visitors were quite impressed from it, especially because it’s a game I did all by myself, without any other help. I really didn’t expect such a good rection! And I did not only show my projects, but I also shown how they are made: I let people read parts of the code, look at 3D models and at the Unity framework, and many other things. I’m pretty sure all of this played a relevant role in making a good impression… Who knows!

So, during these two days I met awesome people, and literally find a great willpower charge to go on with my projects. If there will be other similar events, I’ll do my best to be there!

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- Tech demo 1: Strike Crossing

Other than Beach Marbles Racing, I shown two tech demos, the first being Strike Crossing, a game I was making always with Unity before BMR, and wich I hinted at in the first post of this diary (if you remember)… The game works like the Crash mode in the Burnout series: your objective is to drive your car at the nearest crossing, and making insane havoc out all of the traffic cars around! In the first part of the level you drive your car trying to find the best trajectory to crash at the crossing. After crashing, the second part starts, and you must charge a power bar by hitting (and being hit by) other cars. Then, by using that power, you can drag your vehicle around, and make big explosions to cause even more damage. And don’t let any car come out alive from the crossing!

Actually all of this it’s no more than a tech demo with strange virtual graphics, but the cool fact is that people at Codemotion liked it a lot! I should really consider to continue working on this. I stopped this projects time ago because it wasn’t very easy to do all alone, but, after a year, I feel way more confident in my experience.

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- Tech demo 2: Duel Of Speed

The latest tech demo is Duel Of Speed, a classic racing game with pixelated “2.5D” graphics, like the old arcade games. I always made it with Unity, so it’s still 3D in its core. I literally made this in less than 24 total hours, during the days I was ill, and it’s really nothing more than a spaceship traveling along a circuit, controlled with arrow keys. I always wanted to code something like this, so I did it! This demo too had a neat feedback at Codemotion, but in this state is quite hard to judge. And there are also many bugs…

Oh, I almost forgot! You can TRY IT HERE directly within your browser and the Unity plugin! :D

Honestly, nobody knows very much about this game, but rumors say it will be available one day in this year calendar… Do you trust rumors?

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- SpeedGraphX or…

Okay, I’ve been using the SpeedGraphX name and logo for a while now, but… I’m, starting to realise it’s not a very good brand name to recognize my games. I’m trying to think about something better during this days, so expect a name change sooner or later! Better do it now…

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Well, that’s all for now!
I’ll be able to continue working on Beach Marbles Racing from this Monday, sine I’m going to have quite an intense weekend, wich hopefully will be the last week packed with busy days… And yes, I’ll continue updating the Dev Diary as soon as I have updates, I promise it!

Thank you so much for reading! See you next post, have a great day!

Danjel Ricci (real name > nickname!)

 

Minor game updates!

Hello my dear followers,

my actual web design duties are giong on, so I had very little time to work on Beach Marbles Racing. But there are some minor updates I want to write!

• I signed up in the IndieVault forum (it’s in italian) and presented my Beach Marbles Racing project to the whole community. The game has been received very well, better than I expected, also the users in there are really smart, costructive, and willing to help. You can read the forum thread here.
• Despite working on these two websites, I found a little time to fix how the Loading screen works. Previously, the game had some occasional video-memory leaks, wich caused it to crash during loadings. It could be fixed simply by rebooting the iDevice, but with the new loading sistem, the game doesn’t crash anymore.
• Talking with IndieVault users, I got aware of the importance of mipmaps. This is a function wich reduces the texture size of an object the more it is seen from a distance, making graphics look cleaner and not pixelated, and making GPU unit work less. You can see how absence of mipmaps influences graphic detail, especially on small screens (like non-Retina screens), by looking at the bamboo houses in the distance:
  
  The bamboo roofs appear as an indefinite mass of dirty pixels. With mipmaps on, it would look more clean. Actually Beach Marbles Racing can’t handle proper mipmaps due to some particular configurations I made, but I have already tought a solution for this problem. I’m going to implement it only after finishing the work on those two websites.

This is everything for today. Sorry if I’m being short on words, but I’m going immediately back to work! Thanks for reading, have a good day!

Mr. Drayton

 

New GUI completed + improved marbles shader!

Hello followers,

in the previous post I said I would have updated the diary during the middle of the works for the new GUI… Well, since the recent snowfalls kept me inside my house for an entire week (public transportations were blocked), I had much time to work on the new interface, so I finished it in short time!

I took a bunch of new screenshots. The new GUI design is simplier, cleaner, more readable, and sure is more adequate for a modern product. One advice only: the background is temporary! I still need to change it. Click on the thumbnails for full iPhone/iPod Retina display resolution.

Apart from the new GUI, I enanched a bit glass and metal marbles shaders. I have no official marble designs yet, the ones I have now are only placeholders, but they are pretty good to show the graphic part of the game. So, this is what I come out with:

Looking good! So well, after I’ll change the background, there will be only two big things left to complete the game: marble designs and the audio part. Then a few fixes here and there, and I will be ready to submit the game to AppStore… :D

With this said, finally yesterday I managed to talk with one of those people who commissioned to me a website, so I need to start working on that now. I should finish it within two weeks! Meanwhile, on evening or during night, I will start to draw some good marble designs, so I won’t have to do it later.

Thanks again for your interest, I will keep you updated about my works. Remember you can follow us on Twitter (where I post more frequently), and Like the Beach Marbles Racing Facebook page! See you next update, have a good time!

Mr. Drayton